My friend Karen was planning a birthday celebration for her mother-in-law and told me that the birthday girl had at one time requested a memory quilt. Those who know Karen, know that she doesn't do anything half-way.  She was up to her eyeballs in preparation for the party and knew that she didn't have time to make one.  I told Karen that if she wanted one done enough to hire me to do it that I would make it happen but it would not be an inexpensive endeavor.   Another family member collected and printed the photos while I designed the quilt (not really knowing how many or how large the photos would be.)  We shopped for fabric with a general idea in my mind of how to put it together and a small calculator trying to guesstimate fabric amounts. (Try designing this one on the spot in a fabric store that wants to close in ten minutes - Thank you to the Material Girls in West Jordan, who had the patience of Job while Karen vacillated between two different color schemes and stayed open for an extra hour to accomplish the task).  By the time I got the pictures, I had 8 days to design, piece, quilt and apply the binding to this quilt.  Then Sandy stayed up late into the night to hand stitch the binding.  The result was a very beautiful heirloom quilt.  Well over 72 hours of my time were devoted to this project. And it was finished just 3 hours before the party was to start. 

Each row represented one family

The photos were appliqued on  and the machine quilting stitched around the photos.

The borders were fussy cut to make sure the motifs were centered.

Each corner piece was fussy cut as well.

The backing fabric was designed to look like a wrapped gift and the ribbon portion of the fabric was antique keys. I was a nice tie in Karen chose sort of representing the restoration of the sealing keys for eternal families by Elijah.